SSD prices increasing rapidly

Justin L. Franks said:

SSD prices have been increasing rapidly. 4 TB SSDs* that have gone for ~$200 several times in the past year, did not get any additional discounts during Black Friday. After Black Friday, the same SSDs went up to ~$250. I was expecting them to go down to the $200 price point again for Christmas, but they only went to ~$240.

The only outliers appear to be the 4 TB Crucial X6 for ~$180 (discontinued, limited stock, slower 800 MB/s reads), and the Crucial X9 Pro for $210 (new product, so probably just some sort of intro pricing, 1050 MB/s reads like the Samsung and others).

So my advice would be to snatch one or two of the Crucial ones ASAP. I just picked up one of the X9 Pros. Because unfortunately, prices will almost certainly continue to rise due to wholesale NAND prices going up. This article from PC Gamer cites 512 GB NAND chips spot prices almost doubling in the past six months, with another ~25% short-term increase very likely.

Rising NAND and DDR chip prices mean SSD and memory prices are sure to increase in 2024

Now might be your last chance to grab a bargain.

www.pcgamer.com

*(Samsung T7 Shield, WD My Passport SSD, SanDisk Extreme Portable, etc.)

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Yep!
I tried ordering a Samsung 4tb EVO from Amazon and tried doing a refurbished one but GOTCHA!
When I opened the package expecting a 4tb drive, someone had put a 250gb drive there instead, and the box was sealed from what I could tell, so it looks like one of the 4tb Crucial MX500s for me. I have one of those among my other Samsungs, so we shall see.
I need some space for the new Benjamin Walfisch strings ;^)

Joyfully,
Simeon

Yeah the price of the Samsung QVO 8tb I bought last summer for $319 is now $489 on Amazon

WTF I certainly didn’t expect SSD prices to go up like this,WOW!

4TB SanDisk Extreme, which I have been using, holds around $250 (I see one on eBay for $199 obo)

For better or for worse, I bought an open-box 4TB Extreme Pro for $200 last spring, but it sits empty (bought it in contemplation of getting EW ComposerCloud+ but I have not pulled the trigger. . . yet)

I held off on friday thinking they'd be cheaper on Boxing Day. Huh.

Guess I picked a bad time to be looking into some.

Huh. I thought prices were pretty low when I checked on Amazon this morning...

You are bang on Justin, I did get a couple NVMe's at great prices on BF, and now need a couple more for a build I'm doing for a friend of mine, and ALL of the ones I'm watching have jumped up in the last few days, a lot. And I noticed something: I have parts in pcpartpicker.com, and I did see the Crucial T500 2TB drives go from $107.99 (should have leaped on that) to $119.99, but Amazon didn't up the price until the next day. Might be worth monitoring there than jumping on Amazon before they raise it. At least you'll know the price increase is happening if you are waiting it out.

I also have another hunch but don't take this as cemented in stone: Price cuts hit in the last few days of the year on a lot of electronics because the rush for final revenue before the end of the fiscal year is on, and people are more lickely going to buy toys vs under garments, etc. I'm going to wait for the end of the year and take my chances. Subscribing to newegg's eblast can produce results too.

Ha, as I posted that the Samsung 2TB 990 Pro on Amazon decreased 15 bucks, lol!

My 4 TB Crucial X9 Pro was delivered today. And it is absolutely TINY. Around half the size of my Samsung T7 Shield. It's also a fair bit lighter. It has a bit less dust resistance though (IP55 instead of IP65, the first number is for foreign object intrusion, the 2nd number for water resistance, IP6x is considered dust-tight, while IP5x is dust-protected).

So anyone with a laptop looking for the smallest and lightest external storage, this is probably it. It's even a bit smaller than the Samsung T5, which only went up to 2 TB.

Samsung T7 Shield: 67.5 cm^3 volume (88 x 59 x 13 mm), 98 g weight
Samsung T5: 46.4 cm^3 volume (74 x 57 x 11 mm), 51 g weight
Crucial X9 Pro: 32.5 cm^3 volume (65 x 50 x 10 mm), 40 g weight

The 4 TB Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD is back down to $199.99 @ Newegg. The other similar 4 TB externals remain at $240-$250.

Prices are really up, the 990 Pro Samsung 2TB that I got for $119 last month is now $185. Annnnnnd, here's why:


And here:

The hobbyist market has traditionally been really sensitive to these types of upward price swings and will most likely just hold off and wait for pricing to adjust itself.

As for the nand price increases it won’t take long until one supplier undercuts another to win a larger piece of the market.

Wow, Samsung 2TB 990 Pro went from $119 when I bought it last month to $185 and that's IF you can even find them in stock. Standard SATA SSDs are up a bit too. So far the best deal I can find right now for a 2TB SATA if you need some expansion is this Lexar on Amazon:


I normally stick to Samsung and Crucial, but Lexar is in the game now and their CompactFlash cards for photo work have been 100% flawless in the past 17 years, never one failure in over 200,000 images I've taken across three cameras. I've had SanDisk CF cards AND an SSD fail, but not Lexar so I'm fairly sure this is the last good deal before the big surge hits harder. Just my $.02 of course, before taxes and 401K deduction.

I went ahead and got another 4 TB Crucial X9 Pro, just so I'm set for a long time. It's currently at $229.99 at Best Buy, direct from Crucial, B&H, and Adorama. This sale price ends today at both Best Buy and B&H, the others don't show an end date but it's likely the same. The regular price for it is currently set at $289.99.

So if you use external storage, and think you will need more of it in the near to medium future, I'd strongly consider picking one or two of these now. I suspect all of the 4 TB externals will be at $300 or higher soon.

Out of curiosity, why buy something that has its own enclosure? (I don’t see a big advantage.)

PaulieDC said:

Prices are really up

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I'm not seeing it. I paid $110 for a 2tb SSD drive back in Sept. 2022. That same drive is now selling for $99.

robgb said:

I'm not seeing it. I paid $110 for a 2tb SSD drive back in Sept. 2022. That same drive is now selling for $99.

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kgdrum said:

Yeah the price of the Samsung QVO 8tb I bought last summer for $319 is now $489 on Amazon

WTF I certainly didn’t expect SSD prices to go up like this,WOW!

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The price above which already increased substantially is from last month now three weeks later the price is $579

The same SSD from the same vendor increased from $319 to $579 in about 7 months, that’s an increase of more than 80% in less than one year, this is a definitely a substantial increase.

Soundbed said:

Out of curiosity, why buy something that has its own enclosure? (I don’t see a big advantage.)

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Because a lot of machines - including every laptop and every current Mac but the Mac Pro - don't have internal drive slots.

I'm personally only using one drive that came in its own enclosure, and it's a 12TB spinning backup drive. But I do have a 4TB SSD in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, and if it weren't for that I'd be just as happy with one that was ready to go.

***

In the bigger picture, storage is going to continue getting less expensive just as it has over the past four decades. Yeah prices fluctuate over the short term due to supply issues, but just watch.

8TB NVMe SSDs are in the $800s today; come back in 18 months and my prediction is that they'll have dropped to half that.

EDIT: Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's only 4TB SSDs that have gone up a little. 1 and 2TB ones, and certainly the smaller ones, seem to be less expensive.

robgb said:

I'm not seeing it. I paid $110 for a 2tb SSD drive back in Sept. 2022. That same drive is now selling for $99.

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Standard SATA SSD or NVMe? Regular SSDs are not in demand anymore so those have not risen. All NAND based storage, i.e. PCIe 4.0 NVMe’s have really shot up. I bought a Samsung 2TB 990 Pro last month for $119, now they’re about $185 IF you can find them. We saw it coming then this article confirmed why.

Sorry, I usually focus on NVMe’s when SSD is mentioned. At this point a drive that moves data at 7000mb/sec vs a SATA SSD at maybe 500mb/sec is significant for us maniacs loaded down with terabytes of samples, lol! Now that I can load the VSL CFX in about 8-9 seconds, there’s no looking back.